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Pyre: 8.5/10 Pyre is a yet another masterpiece out of Supergiant Games, creators of Bastion and Transistor. Where Transistor stumbled in a few key areas and seemed a disappointment to the studio, Pyre seems like a celebration of everything that they do well. With hand-drawn landscapes with branching paths to choose from that bring to life the strange world you find yourself trapped within to the amazing music and the tense, choices-focused gameplay that forces you to truly decide what matters most to you, Pyre hooks you in and keeps holding on. It stays true until the end. It is hurt by some jank with its gameplay -- I had some frame sputters during a climactic Rite and the "battle system" has a few quirks and clunky aspects that hurt it some. As is typical, the game seems to have used up all its ideas just as it is ending, but I feel like the system could have been given more depth or stripped of some existing depth to create a more streamlined experience. As it stands, it feels like something is missing. I would love to get posters of some of the Rite arenas, the artwork here is top-notch though. This was a game I regretted waiting on and would gladly pay the full $20 for.
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Jan 6, 2018 14:28
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The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human I played it on the PS4. A very curious and kind of under-the-radar indie title that came to PSN, it's a pseudo-Metroidvania that takes place underwater and you play as a submarine. The premise is sort of Planet of the Apes-esque, a mission to space ends up traveling you through time and you crash into an earth covered in a frozen ocean. There you explore the post apocalyptic ruins of mankind, subsumed by the sea, and fight a series of really hard boss fights against gigantic sea creatures. If you love the ocean and ocean life, there's a lot of appeal here -- you fight enemies like enormous angler fish, an octopus, and an entire school of sharks. There's a sort of Dark Souls-esque grimdark quality to it all, the bosses have names like "the Chain Gang" and "The Tranquil" and this is accompanied by some log entries that unlock as you defeat enemies, giving you a little bit of lore but mostly showcasing a somewhat unfortunately stilted translation job on the English dialogue. I feel like a few pieces of poetry probably sound better in their native German. The gameplay is a mixed bag, ultimately, because the game really leans on being very hard and there's very little to do besides explore and fight bosses. In a way, I really like this -- the atmosphere is really punctuated by you just drifting through a murky ocean, braving dark depths without a lantern, avoiding mines, and discovering new locations. There's a good variety of zones, the visuals are pretty good, pixel graphics and an eerie soundtrack doing a lot to create a sense of a murky ocean. Unfortunately, "murky" is the best way to describe visuals in combat, where multiple bosses actually rely on you having a physical difficulty seeing them or their attacks, because they blend into the background. One enemy explicitly utilizes this, but ironically is the easiest to actually face because it has the decency to telegraph its attacks -- some bosses are beyond frustrating with how quickly they'll kill you without you being able to see them coming. There's definitely an appeal to super masochists who love dying a bunch, but the bosses are poorly balanced in a lot of places and the limited armory and relative openness of the game means you can drift into a boss fight designed for certain upgrades and not know it. I'd say it is pretentious and poorly balanced, the ending is a bit weak (but better than it could have been) and it leans hard on atmosphere because it's fairly shallow everywhere else...but I enjoyed it for the $15, and would certainly recommend it on sale for less than that. This is one of those games where it's got more flaws than strengths, but seems earnest and does something kind of cool. If you've binged every ocean documentary on Netflix and still hunger for more monsters of the deep, go and give this a try -- though, I'd maybe suggest playing it with a mouse instead of a controller. 6/10
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Feb 17, 2018 02:32
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